Work gloves possibly stained with blood that were found recently at murder suspect Stephen McDaniel’s apartments by a private investigator belong to the complex’s owner.

McDaniel, 25, is accused in the slaying and dismemberment of Lauren Giddings, his 27-year-old neighbor and Mercer University law school classmate.

Giddings’ torso was discovered outside their Barristers Hall apartment building June 30.

About halfway into a Magistrate Court hearing held last Friday in McDaniel’s case, McDaniel’s attorney asked Macon police detective David Patterson about a pair of gloves found in the apartment complex’s laundry room.

“Are you aware,” Floyd Buford said, “that recently one of our investigators was up at the laundry room and found a pair of blue gloves in the laundry room?”

Bibb County District Attorney Greg Winters objected, arguing that the hearing was not the place “to ask what has been found now, six or eight weeks later.”

Magistrate Judge Bill Shurling overruled the objection and Buford continued.

“Have you been informed in the course of your investigation,” he asked Patterson on Friday, “that this week there was found in the laundry room a pair of blue gloves that appeared to have blood stains on them? Are you aware of that?”

“No,” the detective said.

Reached by phone Wednesday, Boni Bush said the gloves referenced in the hearing belonged to her. Bush and her brother own the apartments.

The gloves are made of nitrile and are the kind available at local home improvement stores, Bush said.

She said the investigator found them on top of a dryer in the laundry room where she’d been doing work to prepare the complex for new tenants.

Bush said she used that type of gloves for painting.

A source told The Telegraph that police retrieved the gloves from the complex Friday following the court hearing.

Buford declined to comment about the gloves when reached by phone Wednesday.

To contact writer Amy Leigh Womack, call 744-4398. To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397.